Las Vegas flights canceled due to extreme heat

US Airways cancelled 18 flights on Saturday in Las Vegas because of the extreme heat. An airline spokesperson said planes are certified to take off in temperatures up to 118 degrees. The temperature in Las Vegas on Saturday was recorded at 127 degrees, making it the hottest spot on Earth that day.

In a report to CNN, Sgt. Troy Stirling, police spokesman in Lake Havasu, Arizona, near the California state line, said: ” I’m not worried as much about the people who have lived here a while. It’s more the tourists coming into the area, even from Southern California, who aren’t used to this kind of heat.”

The heat wave comes just before the 100th anniversary of what the National Weather Service calls the “highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth” when the thermometer read 134 degrees on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley’s Greenland Ranch in eastern California.

The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for large parts of California, Nevada, and Arizona, and a heat advisory for other parts of Nevada. Many of the excessive heat warnings extend through Tuesday night. Starting Wednesday, temperatures will drop by a couple of degrees, moving closer to normal temperatures.

The extreme heat may have caused the death of an elderly man in Las Vegas. Paramedics found the man dead in his home, which did not have air conditioning, Las Vegas Fire & Rescue spokesman Tim Szymanski said he died of cardiac arrest and the heat may have contributed to his death.